Best Debut Albums

I hadn’t thought of Steve Forbert for a while, but thinking about him leads to thinking about great debut albums, of people arriving fully formed.

I’m not talking about great debut albums like Michael Jackson’s OFF THE WALL or John Lennon’s PLASTIC ONO BAND — solo albums by established artists. I’m talking about artists coming from out of nowhere, fully formed.

So what are the great debut albums?

Eminem arrived as a major star, but I think his first album — which was a monster hit — is sophomoric. It’s the only one of his albums I never listen to.

Ricky Lee Jones, for those of you who care, had a great debut album. At least it sounded great way back in 1979. That same year, the B-52s had a convincing debut. Yup, yup, time for me to get out the rocking chair.

The Pretenders first album in 1980 was probably their best. Yup, yup, time to crack open a bottle of Geritol.

Actually, to me, the debut album that causes this reverie is one I consider to be the best ever, and I wonder how many of you have ever heard it — or heard anything from it: Steve Forbert’s ALIVE ON ARRIVAL, from 1978.

Forbert was a small town guy from Mississippi who went to New York in the mid-1970s to make it as a folk singer. Going to NY in the mid-1970s took Big Ones, because it was not the low crime Giuliani-Bloomberg New York of today. Remember the line from the Elton John song, “Subway’s no way for a good man to go down?” That was the idea — you take the subway and get killed. You live in the lower East Side, and you are rolling the dice with your life. It also meant living in squalor and, if you’re trying to make it as an artist, living with humiliation and rejection. And, if you’re an artist from Mississippi, living with cultural dislocation.

Anyway, ALIVE ON ARRIVAL, with a lot of generosity, balance and good humor, is all about that experience. The whole album is terrific, but there are a handful of songs that deserve to be standards. Not the least of which are TONIGHT I FEEL SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME and IT ISN’T GONNA BE THAT WAY.

I discovered Forbert in 1979, because I had a girlfriend who liked HEART — remember HEART (oooooh, Barracuda!). Anyway, I took her to a HEART concert, and Forbert was the opening act. And because no one wanted to see him, because they wanted to see HEART, he was getting booed the whole time . . . And it made him laugh. He had such good humor about it that I bought his record. Anyway, this morning I put it on for the first time in a while and, unlike a lot of things from 1979, it sounds as good as ever.